First edition | |
Author | Alice Walker |
---|---|
Cover artist | Hal Siegal |
Publisher | Harcourt Brace Jovanovich |
Publication date | 1970 |
Pages | 247 pp. |
ISBN | 978-0-15-189905-0 |
OCLC | 188256 |
The Third Life of Grange Copeland is the debut novel of American author Alice Walker. Published in 1970, it is set in rural Georgia. It tells the story of Grange, his wife, their son Brownfield, and granddaughter Ruth. [1]
A debut novel is the first novel a novelist publishes. Debut novels are often the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to publish in the future. First-time novelists without a previous published reputation, such as publication in nonfiction, magazines, or literary journals, typically struggle to find a publisher.
Alice Walker is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and activist. She wrote the novel The Color Purple (1982), for which she won the National Book Award for hardcover fiction, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She also wrote the novels Meridian (1976) and The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), among other works. An avowed feminist, Walker coined the term "womanist" to mean "A black feminist or feminist of color" in 1983.
This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1970.
As a poor sharecropper, Grange is virtually a slave; in cotton-era Baker County, Georgia, the more he works, the more money he ends up owing to the man who owns the fields he works and the house he lives in. Eventually life becomes too much for him and he runs away from his debts to start a new life up North, leaving his family.
Baker County is a county in Georgia. As of the 2010 census, the population was 3,451. The county seat and only city is Newton. The county was created December 12, 1825 from the eastern portion of Early County by an act of the Georgia General Assembly and is named for Colonel John Baker, a hero of the American Revolutionary War.
After declining a loan from a white landowner which he knows he can't pay back, Brownfield begins to head North on foot to follow in his father's footsteps. Brownfield is led to a woman named Josie who owns and operates a lounge/brothel called the Dew Drop Inn (in some printings, the Dewey Inn). Brownfield winds up sharing a bed with Josie, her daughter Lorene, and Josie's deceased sister's daughter Mem. Brownfield takes a liking to Mem and eventually marries her under the disapproving Josie's nose.
Brownfield beats and eventually kills Meme (sometimes printed as "Mem") and is jailed for an arbitrary seven years. Grange finds the North unfulfilling and returns to Baker County, which is the only place he knows of as home.
Walker says,"it was an incredibly difficult novel to write, for I had to look at, and name, and speak up about violence among black people in the black community at the same time that black people (and some whites)--including me and my family were enduring massive psychological and physical violence from white supremacists in the southern states, particularly Mississippi."
She further states that the incident in the novel involving the murder of a woman and mother by her husband and the father of her children is based on a real case in her hometown of Eatonton, Georgia.
Gone with the Wind is a novel by American writer Margaret Mitchell, first published in 1936. The story is set in Clayton County and Atlanta, both in Georgia, during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era. It depicts the struggles of young Scarlett O'Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner, who must use every means at her disposal to claw her way out of poverty following Sherman's destructive "March to the Sea". This historical novel features a Bildungsroman or coming-of-age story, with the title taken from a poem written by Ernest Dowson.
Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was an American novelist and journalist who wrote under the name Peggy Mitchell. Mitchell wrote only one novel, published during her lifetime, the American Civil War-era novel Gone with the Wind, for which she won the National Book Award for Most Distinguished Novel of 1936 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937. In more recent years, a collection of Mitchell's girlhood writings and a novella she wrote as a teenager, Lost Laysen, have been published. A collection of articles written by Mitchell for The Atlanta Journal was republished in book form.
The Color Purple is a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. It was later adapted into a film and musical of the same name.
Elizabeth of York was the wife of Henry VII, and thus the first Tudor queen. She was the daughter of Edward IV and his wife Elizabeth Woodville, and niece of Richard III. She married Henry VII in 1486, after being detained by him the previous year following the latter's victory at the Battle of Bosworth Field, which started the last phase of the Wars of the Roses. Together, Elizabeth and Henry had a total of four sons, three of whom died before their father, leaving their brother, Henry VIII, to succeed his father as king.
Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, was an English author and playwright.
Nothing But a Man is a 1964 American independent drama film starring Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln, and directed by Michael Roemer, who also co-wrote the film with Robert M. Young. The film tells the story of Duff Anderson, an African-American railroad worker in the early 1960s who tries to maintain his respect in a racist small town near Birmingham, Alabama, after he marries the local preacher's daughter. In addition to dealing with oppression and discrimination, Anderson must also come to terms with his troubled relationship with his own father, a drunk who abandoned and rejected him.
Room at the Top is a 1959 British film based on the novel of the same name by John Braine. The novel was adapted by Neil Paterson with uncredited work by Mordecai Richler. It was directed by Jack Clayton and produced by John and James Woolf. The film stars Laurence Harvey, Simone Signoret, Heather Sears, Donald Wolfit, Donald Houston and Hermione Baddeley.
Margaret Walker was an American poet and writer. She was part of the African-American literary movement in Chicago, known as the Chicago Black Renaissance. Her notable works include the award-winning poem "For My People" (1942) and the novel Jubilee (1966), set in the South during the American Civil War.
Rebecca Walker is an American writer, feminist, and activist. Walker has been regarded as one of the prominent voices of Third Wave Feminism since she published an article on feminism in 1992 in Ms. magazine in which she proclaimed: "I am the Third Wave."
The Confessions of Nat Turner is a 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by U.S. writer William Styron. Presented as a first-person narrative by historical figure Nat Turner, the novel concerns the slave revolt in Virginia in 1831. It is based on The Confessions of Nat Turner: The Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Virginia, a first-hand account of Turner's confessions published by a local lawyer, Thomas Ruffin Gray, in 1831.
Riverwind is a fictional character from the Dragonlance series of Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game supplements and novels, created by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman and published by TSR.
Jacinta "Josie" Russell is a fictional character on the Australian soap opera Home and Away, portrayed by actress Laurie Foell. She first appeared on 9 August 2004 and departed on 29 June 2005. Foell previously starred in the serial as Kelly McCane in 1999 and Josie's cousin Angie Russell in 2002.
Amos Fortune, Free Man is a biographical novel by Elizabeth Yates that won the Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature in 1951. It is about a young African prince who is captured and taken to America as a slave. He masters a trade, purchases his freedom and dies free in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, in 1801.
Jubilee (1966) is a historical novel written by Margaret Walker, which focuses on the story of a biracial slave during the American Civil War. It is set in Georgia and later in various parts of Alabama in the mid-19th century before, during, and after the Civil War.
A Good House is the first novel by Canadian writer Bonnie Burnard, published by Picador in 1999 and later by Henry Holt and Company in United States of America. It was the winner of that year's Scotiabank Giller Prize. The novel narrates the story of a family in three generations, five houses starting from 1949 until 1997.
Just Above My Head is James Baldwin's sixth novel, first published in 1979.
The Man is a 1905 Victorian novel by Bram Stoker, best known for Dracula. A typical Gothic novel, it features horror and romance. The Man has also been published as The Gates of Life.
Mr. Weston's Good Wine is a novel by T. F. Powys, first published in 1927.
Margaret Loyd Jarman "Marney" Hagood (1907–1963) was an American sociologist and demographer who "helped steer sociology away from the armchair and toward the calculator". She wrote the books Mothers of the South (1939) and Statistics for Sociologists (1941), and later became president of the Population Association of America and of the Rural Sociological Society.